Upgrade StorageCode MS word docs as webpages in Zotero
I discovered a neat application for adding word docs to the zotero ibrary as webpages--Google docs (docs.google.com). Google docs lets you upload any word doc off your hard drive into google docs as a web page. Then you can turn on Zotero, and add the web word doc to Zotero using the "Create New Item From Current Page." You can then create notes and tags for the newly created Web doc, put it into folders, etc. Even better, Google docs also lets you add comments to the web word doc, so you can annotate directly in your word doc as well as zotero.
This seems like a great capability for integrating archival and fieldnotes (primary research materials) with the secondary research materials in your library.
Has anyone else tried this?
This seems like a great capability for integrating archival and fieldnotes (primary research materials) with the secondary research materials in your library.
Has anyone else tried this?
(I would also like a function in Zotero that allowed you to use your collections as a planner for writing eg the ability to put together all the materials you need for a chapter in one collection, and organize it into "brainstorming" or outlining sense.)
On the second subject, I have looked at the posts on "organising notes" but I had in mind something that allowed management of all types of documents, files, images, webpages, and citations into "buckets" and "sub buckets" and then allowed rearrangement of these into relationships corresponding to the form of the project as it takes shape (and possibly even allowed naming of the relationships as well as of the "buckets" in them) In a way this is thinking of Zotero not as the means of adding bits to a document, which sits outside it, but the other way around, of the organisation of Zotero (or some part of it) as the document of which the bits are constituent parts.
I'm no database architect, just a user, but I had thought that 'Collections' might eventually be enabled to do this, however perhaps it is a function better left with 'Tags'.
It seems the users of this site think of Zotero as primarily a method of managing citations and web pages over using it as a way to organise or integrate with other research functions, particularly the early ambiguous diffuse stage where you don't quite know what you are doing and need to reorganise a few times.
I'm interested to know how others might be using Zotero for planning and as a heuristic device, and whether developers think of it as eventually including capabilities for more of the stages of research .
A system that would make sense to me as a sociology PhD student would be to develop a method of using dynamic "tag clouds" somewhat like Visual Thesaurus (http://www.visualthesaurus.com/) does, only to show tag relationships, rather than words only . For instance I have tag 'clusters' like "Constructivism, Interpretivism, Verstehen, Meaning, Symbolic Interactionism" which don't show up in Zotero as being related to each-other except in the specific instance of being attached to a particular work. They would in a dynamic "node and stem" type visualisation as above.
There may be an opensource version of this kind of thinking somewhere. I have seen a couple of examples of this kind of approach, once also used for mind mapping (but I can't remember the name of the site).
I think one of the design issues for Zotero might be that some people think in "trees' and some in 'clouds" and these two seem to be the main organisational tropes for planning before and during a project. So maybe the answer is to provide both. Organise Collections in more flexible 'trees' and Tags in "clouds". The social bookmarking method of just having frequently used tags in bigger font, while simple, still obscures relationships.
The set of semantic relationships you link to erazlogo, look great. They could be used for the connectors and either a tag or a “work” could be used as a node (or both if visually discriminated, or perhaps a “toggle between" version) The only other semantic relationship I can think of not in the list is “builds on”.
A tag cloud or a 'works" cloud is not really a planner as such but could provide a really good basis for planning as it would help to visualise the citational "strength" of, as well as the relationships between topics.
I see Zotero 1.0 as just a very first step towards this, and that the real possibilities will emerge with Zotero 2.0. If I can easily grab my data from the web and mix it up with other data from the web, a whole lot of possibilities open up.
Thank you for your help. I am working online, however I cannot seem to see an 'upload attachment' option in our items list. It seems I am a member who has the capacity to 'view and edit'. You don't have any ideas why this might be do you? Thank you again for your assistance.
Kind regards,
Jess
But this will be much easier if you install the Zotero software and sync that. Any reason that's out of the question?
Also, view and edit items is a separate permission from adding and editing files.